At the National Cherry Blossom Festival Sakura Matsuri on April 16. DC area go club volunteers have supported the Sakura 
Matsuri Go Workshop every year since 1998.
– report/photos by John Goon; collage by Chris Garlock
American Go E-Journal » Go News
Go Photos: DC Sakura Matsuri
Saturday May 21, 2016
Eric Zhang’s beautiful sweep in North Carolina
Saturday May 21, 2016
Eric Zhang 5d swept all four games to win the at the 2016 North Carolina Spring Go tournament “on a beautiful Sunday,” 
reports Tournament Director Jeff Kuang. A total of 28 players turned out May 15 to enjoy the competition.
Here are the tournament results. Open section: Eric Zhang 5d (4-0), Brian Wu 1d (3-1). 1-7kyu: Daniel Evan 1k (3-1), Adam Bridges 3k (3-1), Bob Bacon 6k (3-1). 8-12kyu: S. Y. Teague 8k (3-0), Alex Kuang 10k (3-1). 14kyu and up: Justin Su 21k (3-1), Ganning Xu 15k (2-1), John Schollenberger 14k (2-2).
photo: Ellen Zeng 10k and William Daland 8k concentrate
AlphaGo Updates: What the AI Behind AlphaGo Can Teach Us About Being Human; A glimpse inside AlphaGo? Lee Sedol vs AlphaGo Game 1 Go Commentary; Lee Sedol overtaxed?
Saturday May 21, 2016
What the AI Behind AlphaGo Can Teach Us About Being Human: AJA HUANG DIPS his hand into a wooden
bowl of polished black stones and, without looking, thumbs one between his middle and index finger. Peering through wire-rim glasses, he places the black stone on the board, in a mostly empty zone, just below and to the left of a single white stone. In Go parlance it is a “shoulder hit,” in from the side, far away from most of the game’s other action. Across the table, Lee Sedol, the best Go player of the past decade, freezes. He looks at the 37 stones fanned out across the board, then stands up and leaves…Read the rest of Cade Metz’ report in Wired. photo by Geordie Wood
A glimpse inside AlphaGo? “Here’s a picture of the machine 
Google used in the match against Lee Sedol,” writes Steven Schmeiser. “It turns out that they were using custom designed chips that are optimized for machine learning.”
Google supercharges machine learning tasks with TPU custom chip
Go Commentary: Lee Sedol vs AlphaGo – Game 1: If there’s any recent game that needs no introduction, it’s this one. On March 9, 2016, the computer Go program ‘AlphaGo’ defeated Lee Sedol 9p in the first game of the Google DeepMind Challenge Match. Go Game Guru’s Youngil An takes a look at the game.
Lee Sedol overtaxed? In a related story, Gordan Castanza reports that “I just learned from KBS News (Korean Broadcast System) this morning that Lee Sedol has left the Korean Baduk Association over the issue of its imposing a 20% ‘tax’ on him.” Stay tuned for more details as they become available.
Strong Open Section for Upcoming Maryland Open
Saturday May 21, 2016
Pre-registration for next weekend’s annual Maryland Open has topped 20 and will feature a strong Open section, including 
Xinying Jiang 7D, Zhaonian Chen 7D, Zhengbokang Tang 7D, Calvin Sun 1P, Shiyao Qiao 1P, Xiaocheng Hu 6D, Willis Huang 6D, Edward Zhang 6D and Justin Teng 6D.
One of the oldest chapters in the American Go Association, the Gilbert W. Rosenthal Memorial Baltimore Go Club has sponsored the Maryland Open go tournament every Memorial Day weekend for 43 years. Details and register here.
photo: at the 2012 MD Open; photo by John Pinkerton
Three Years of Colors Chosen for Santa Monica Coffee Cup; 2016 Tourney is June 11
Wednesday May 18, 2016
The design committee of the Santa Monica Coffee Cup has finally chosen this year’s theme color, along with the colors for 
the next two years after. The eponymous “Coffee Cup” to be awarded to the first place winners in each division, as well as the tiles awarded the placers, for the 10th Annual Santa Monica Coffee Cup will be painted “fulvous,” a kind of dark yellow with some brown in it, said tournament organizer and AGA president Andrew Okun. “There were good arguments for mikado and sarcoline, but fulvous won the day.” The 2017 theme color will be something between glaucous and Nattier blue, followed by sang-de-boeuf in 2018.
Oh, and the tournaments itself will be June 11. The three-round AGA-rated go tournament is held, courtesy of owner Pam Stollings, at the UnUrban Coffeehouse in Santa Monica, CA. Check in starting at 9 a.m., rounds at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m., prize giving around 5:30 p.m. Prizes will also include coffee, go books, bacon-flavored toothpicks and UnUrban T-shirts. Help is gratefully accepted for setting up and clearing up. Preregistration is essential as the field must be held to 64 players at most. Please register immediately.The 2017 and 2018 tournaments have not had their dates fixed yet, but the organizers will seek to hold them on the usual middle weekend of June. Please contact Okun at andy@okun.name if you know whether or not “mikado” should be capitalized in the sentence above, or have other questions about the tournament.
Go Photo: AlphaGo sparks interest at Brooklyn Cherry Blossom Fest
Tuesday May 17, 2016
The Brooklyn Go Club hosted its annual event at the Sakura Matsuri (Cherry Blossom) Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic 
Garden on April 30 and May 1. “A fair amount of interest was sparked by Alphago,” reports Barbara Calhoun.
photo by Calhoun
Go Photo: Hangin’ at the Western MA Club
Monday May 16, 2016
“We had a great turnout last Thursday night for the Western Massachusetts Go Club at ‘The Roost’ in Northampton,” reports Eric Osman.
photo by Osman
US Go Congress tournaments: Old favorites and new excitement
Saturday May 14, 2016
Tournament details for this year’s US Go Congress — July 30-August 7 in Boston — are still in development, but in addition to
the US Open and US Open Masters, players can already look forward to favorites like the Diehard, Lightning, Crazy Go, and Pair Go tournaments. Some new excitement has been added for all levels in the form of Relay Go tournaments, where teams of players will switch off playing games of pair go, with an added element being that the teams that are currently not playing are able to discuss and strategize. One tournament will be open to all, and one will be an exciting US-China team showdown featuring professional and very strong players that promises to be an exciting addition to Go Congress events. A new Evening League will be a week-long ladder tournament, combining elements of the Self-Paired tournament and Midnight Madness and giving players the opportunity to self-pair and play rated games throughout the day. Stay tuned for further updates as we get closer to game-time.
– Karoline Li, EJ Congress Team (if you’re interested in being on this year’s team, email us at journal@usgo.org)
photo: at the 2015 US Open; photo by Chris Garlock
The Power Report: Honinbo title match starts; Septuple crown in danger?
Wednesday May 11, 2016
by John Power, Japan correspondent for the E-Journal
The first game of the 71st Honinbo title match was played in the Honinbo Shusaku Igo Memorial Hall (right) on the island of Inno-shima (Shusaku’s birthplace) in the city of Onomichi in Hiroshima Prefecture on May 9 and 10. This is Iyama Yuta’s first title defence since completing the first-ever Grand Slam of the top seven titles. The challenger is Takao Shinji 9P, who has a bad record against Iyama (13-30 before this match) but who took the Tengen title from him in 2014, thus slowing down his quest for the grand slam. Takao has also been in great form this year and, as of May 3, had 13 wins to one loss.
Takao (left) drew white in the first game. During the middle game, Iyama (right) made a strong attack on a white group; Takao sacrificed it, getting an attack on two black groups as compensation. Later, Takao 
was able to force Iyama into a large ko fight that could potentially decide the game. Lacking ko threats, Iyama finished off the ko and let Takao revive his dead group. This trade was favorable for Takao. Iyama did his best to catch up, but couldn’t quite manage it. Takao likes to build thickness and in this case his thickness did him in good stead in the endgame. Iyama resigned after White 244. This was Takao’s first win against Iyama after a string of seven losses.
This is just one loss, so, my headline notwithstanding, Iyama will not yet be too worried. The second game will be played on May 23 and 24.
Stars Top Lions in Virginia
Wednesday May 11, 2016
“There were 31 excited third through fifth grade participants at an elementary school tourney in Prince William County of Northern Virginia,” reports organizer Garrett Smith. “The two elementary schools, Neabsco and King, faced off on May 5th. Even though the Lions out numbered the Stars by more than two to one, the Stars carried the day. Both schools have had year-long, before school go clubs generously supported by the the American Go Foundation,” adds Smith. – Paul Barchilon, EJ Youth Editor. Photo by Garret Smith